Other Crafting interface

PaulJ

Terrarian
(I had to edit this a whole bunch of times because I tend to ramble - sorry, my bad.)

The crafting interface is needlessly inconvenient imo. This can be fixed, and in part has already been demonstrated to some extent on the older console versions via the category tabs (which aren't perfect, just using them as an example).

1) Discovery is detached from execution
Players finding new material need to talk to the Guide NPC, then go to the actual crafting station. This leads to plenty of unnecessary back-and-forth. The crafting stations themselves should be able to display recipe discovery as well. Putting infodumps on NPCs isn't good design anyway, it feels like a stopgap measure that was supposed to be replaced with a proper interface. What long-term player bothers to bring multiple materials to the guide then scroll patiently through every list? You can't even search them, making discovery that much less easy.

2) Display consistency
By displaying recipes on the crafting stations instead of per-material at the Guide NPC, the game can show consistent lists. Right now you can play peek-a-boo: open up crafting and it shows 10 recipes, take wood out from a chest into your inventory and suddenly now it shows 20 recipes. Unnecessarily confusing. Just show all recipes for that station, then put a grey border around materials you don't have enough of. If you don't want to spoil all recipes, grey out those that don't have any materials discovered. "Ok, I see this loom shows 30 recipes, 15 which are greyed out and 8 that I don't have enough materials of, which means I can only craft any of the remaining 7 recipes." This is useful information you don't get currently (how many recipes exist for this station, which ones you can craft). Right now all you'll get is "hmm, I can craft 7 recipes at this loom."

I'm not a UX guy so I don't have an "obvious" solution to present; but as it stands crafting is cumbersome - try explaining the process to new players and see their reactions. They'd probably give up and use the wiki - just like everyone else. Clearly there is room for improvement here.
 
Gotta say that as a new player, this aspect of the game has indeed been very cumbersome and frustrating. The result is that I rarely craft anything, and when I do, it's usually after checking the wiki for what I need (including what crafting station is required). Oftentimes crafting is a very fun activity in games, but that simply isn't the case here. We're getting piles and heaps of resources, requiring tens upon tens of chests, but have little idea what to actually do with it all. A better solution, like for example outlined above, would be much preferable.
 
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